When vocalist Fredy Omar was growing up in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, he dreamed of one day visiting the north coast city of La Ceiba and its fabled Carnival.

"Tegucigalpa didn't have a Carnival, " Omar said recently. "It is a romantic city; you hear balladeers. Salsa and Latin Caribbean music is played mostly up north. I didn't have an opportunity to be in Carnival and costumes and play on the street -- I didn't have any of this party experience in my life."

He didn't make it to La Ceiba before moving to New Orleans. Last year, Omar was invited to be a guest of honor at La Ceiba's Carnival celebration and to compose a theme song. His two submissions, "La Reina del Carnaval (The Queen of Carnival)" and "Carnaval Conga, " set the tone for his new, third CD, "Latin Party! In New Orleans."

"Latin Party! In New Orleans, " a collection of Cuban salsas, Dominican merengues, Colombian cumbias and other Latin dance rhythms, is Omar's first CD for Mardi Gras Records, following a self-released debut and a 2000 release on Louisiana Red Hot Records, "Desde Nueva Orleans." Mardi Gras wanted Omar to cut an album of familiar Latin standards, but he lobbied to showcase original material.

In the end, they compromised. Omar and his band put their stamp on such popular Latin standards as "El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor)" -- featuring a vocal give and take with Charmaine Neville -- and "Cielito Lindo, " but also included multiple original compositions. Those include the two La Ceiba Carnival compositions, a remade "Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras" (originally heard on his first album) and "La Vampirita (The Little Vampire), " a merengue inspired by a Goth girl Omar observed on Decatur Street.

"For me, it's very important to do original music, " Omar said. "And even in the covers we are doing our own thing."

Bassist/guitarist Jose "Pepe" Coloma did most of the new album's arrangements, including Omar and company's remake of "Mardi Gras Mambo." Originally popularized by Art Neville and the Hawkettes, the seasonal anthem is redone as a cha cha cha featuring local blues guitarist Kipori "Baby Wolf" Woods. Omar always thought it odd that a song called "Mardi Gras Mambo" was not done with a mambo rhythm. When he tried, he discovered the mambo clave pattern clashed with the song's melody. However, the clave pattern of the cha cha cha form worked.

That version made it onto the record, as Omar continues to draw on the inspiration of his adopted hometown, inspiration that first struck soon after he moved here. One night at Cafe Brasil, he heard local jazz singer John Boutte accompanied by Andy Wolf on acoustic bass, doing a program of traditional New Orleans music, the sort normally heard with a full band. Omar was blown away by the creative possibilities represented by this stripped-down approach.

"I realized that this was the perfect city for me, because I can be free, " he said. "I can experiment with a lot of things that, in Latin America, you cannot do because they are used to a standard way of doing things. There was an artistic freedom that I felt; my records reflect that freedom. That's the good thing about New Orleans, the refreshing feeling of being born again.

"When I came to the United States, you are prepared to come to this cold, big city, with big buildings, where everything is work, work, work, with no fun. When I came to New Orleans, it was like every night was a party. I used to live on Frenchmen and Chartres, in the middle of all the action. Every night, something was going on. When I left Honduras, I told my family that I was coming back in a month. But when I got to New Orleans, I knew that I was going to stay here."